Operations / Business Development

Welcome to Operations! (Also known as Business Development.)

The role of Operations is a wide one. Many back-end processes are required for a robotics team which typically aren't thought about or glossed over when looking at a team at a glance. These Priorities include but are not limited to:

Raising money, either through Grants or Donations
Planning and scheduling Outreach Events, events that raise community knowledge and support of our team by supporting the community
Getting team members to attend said Outreach Events
Wider team popularity initiatives, such as parent or school support
Social Media management and production
Merchandising, not just shirts but also team pins or promotional imagery
Planning events such as the end of year banquet
"Whatever else the Team Captains tell you to do because there's no one else to do them"

The schedule of an operations member is a weird one compared to the team - you'll be working doubly as hard during the training season to not only train other Business development members, but to also apply for frequent start of year grants, the biggest and most impactful ones. By the time the competition season begins, while your workload isn't "light", you typically can take a step back as the rest of the team is focused on building a robot! After competition season, the summer becomes the prime time for outreach and other events, this is especially where getting team members to attend and help out becomes difficult.

With such a wide range of topics, most of the specifics of Business Development are contained within its specific subpages here, so here's a general time frame coming from me (Frankie Pace, Bus/Dev Co-Lead 2024-2026):

Beginning of the year: Grants and specific sponsorships! These get you a lot of your money and having the big specifics are very important earlier rather then later. Also work on either becoming or appointing a social media manager as soon as possible so team momentum can be built up for the rest of the year (the fun stuff! At-least, fun to take pictures of and post on social media.)
During Build season, your big priority should be team merchandise, specifically the team jersey and pins.
Afterwards, the summer is the perfect time for Outreach!

May you enjoy your time spent as the 'without a doubt' best sub-team!